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Faculty Profiles
Dr. Sudhir Nayak
Affectionately known as the “worm guy,” Dr. Sudhir Nayak has indeed made a career for himself studying one of biology’s most versatile model systems: Caenorhabditis elegans, or C. elegans. “The worm is awesome,” said the associate professor of biology. He specializes in genetics and bioinformatics, weaving computer science, genetics, and quite a few worms into his research at The College of New Jersey. Read Full Story
Dr. Jeffrey Erickson
“If we can bring any little piece of evidence to bear about why SIDS is occurring, then it gives us the ability to devise strategies to identify and monitor newborns that are at risk, to get them through this critical developmental period,” Erickson said.
Dr. Suriza van der Sandt
“If we want children to do better in math, we need to start with their teachers. Math anxiety is one of those ills passed on to students that could negatively affect their achievement,” says van der Sandt, who focuses on elementary school teachers purveying the most fundamental math. Read Full Story
Dr. Miroslav “Mike” Martinovic
“I have always been interested in the idea of making this inanimate object think rationally,” he said. “In fact, while it’s extremely hard to make a computer think like a human, one can make it follow the rules of rational thinking and be successful at it, which to me that is just an absolutely amazing thing." Read Full Story
Dr. Maggie Benoit
Like most every child, Maggie Benoit had her eyes set on the stars, dreaming of one day becoming an astronaut. But instead of becoming a rocket scientist, she is now a rock scientist – or more specifically, a solid earth geophysicist. Read Full Story
Dr. Cynthia Curtis
Cynthia Curtis had numbers in her blood. With a grandmother and mother who both studied mathematics, it is no surprise that this professor was drawn to the field. “I never thought to question whether mathematics was something a woman could do,” explained Curtis, who says she was inspired by their example. Read Full Story
Dr. Benny Chan
Not many professors stumble upon entirely new compounds in the course of their research but for Dr. Benny Chan, these “serendipitous discoveries,” as he likes to call them, are just part of being a materials chemist. Read Full Story
Dr. Janet Morrison
Janet Morrison has a thing for plants. There are several in her office, she spends most of her day talking about them, and when she is not in the classroom, she is outdoors working with them. As the resident plant ecologist here at The College of New Jersey, Morrison has even devoted her career to them. Read Full Story
Dr. Amanda Norvell
For someone who had never handled flies before her post-doctoral position at Princeton University, Amanda Norvell is surprisingly comfortable keeping thousands in the laboratory here at TCNJ. Read Full Story
Dr. Thulsi Wickramasinghe
As a young boy, Thulsi Wickramasinghe was fascinated by the cosmos. The future astrophysicist and his grandfather would wake at 3 a.m. and walk along the shore in southern Sri Lanka, discussing the magnificent stars and constellations above them until the rising sun overtook the night sky. Read Full Story
Dr. David Holmes
Statistician Dr. David Holmes is a modern day Sherlock, but with a twist. Channeling his namesake’s gifts for catching culprits, this word-sleuth applies the techniques of stylometry—the statistical analysis of literary style—to uncover the authorship of anonymous works of literature. Read Full Story
Dr. Andrea Salgian
Ever wondered how computers see? Dr. Andrea Salgian, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, has dedicated her career to the study of that very question through her work in the field of computer vision. Here at TCNJ, Salgian shares her expertise with students both in and out of the classroom through a variety of research programs, including gesture detection, face recognition, and an interdisciplinary project working to build a robotic “maestro” conductor. Read Full Story
